


After the Volcano

by Fish_Echo



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Character of Color, Comment Fic, Contains Natural Disasters, Other, Trapped Off-world, could be slash or could be gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-11
Updated: 2009-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fish_Echo/pseuds/Fish_Echo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard Woolsey, Laura Cadman's team, and a few others, are trapped offworld after a volcano buries the stargate, this is the story of what happens after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Volcano

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toft_froggy (Toft)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toft/gifts).



> This story is a bit difficult to tag as regarding the Richard'n'Ronon relationship: Richard Woolsey and Ronon Dex kiss, I'm undecided if it is a gen kiss or a pre-existing relationship kiss. You may read it as you choose (I'm the author and the characters didn't even tell me), I think it makes for a lovely story either way.
> 
> Written for toft's prompt of: RICHARD AND RONON KISS.
> 
> [[Originally posted to thingswithwing's LJ](http://thingswithwings.livejournal.com/51233.html?thread=1815585#t1815585)] for the kissing fest she hosted upon the end of SGA. This version is edited from that version.
> 
> Original author notes: This is perhaps not what you wanted. I highly doubt it's what you were expecting. Frankly, it's not what I was expecting. The story kind of went its own way. I also evidently completely fail at the idea of comment-fic. Sorry? I do promise that there's kissing at the end! I will note that I chose the composition of the off-world party solely to amuse me, rather than according to any actual logic.

The treaty renewal was going along very well (there was the mutual vying for more favorable terms, the expected long meals where nothing of substance was said, the beautiful live quartet whose music was felt by the Dartantians to be conducive to diplomacy) until everything went to hell. The long-dead volcano north of Caros City decided that really, dormancy was over-rated. The Stargate was buried in the first lava flow, huge swaths of the city were covered in the boiling molten rock, a steaming cloud hung above the banks of the former-river Riobin and those who remained alive in the city were given to chaos.

In what Richard Woosley would later be thankful for but didn't bother wasting brain cells on at the time, the Treaty Building was unaffected by volcanic anger. He put the Lanteans, their talents (organizational, muscular, medical, even diaper-changing, everything) and what meager live-saving equipment they had brought (on an easy diplomatic mission to known friendly allies) at the disposal of the Dartantians and no one slept at all for the next three days. After that the doctors forced the (rescuers, excavators, medics, injured) survivors to sleep at least periodically and eat when food was available. Help from the outlying communities arrived after a week, but other than food and water and clothes and manpower they had little to offer (Richard dully remembered learning in a time when he didn't have ash embedded in his very bones that there had been a religious split over the place of technology in society and its (amazing he had felt at the time) peaceful resolution with the Luddites taking over the areas distal to Caros.) The rescue work continued.

A month after the eruption, the pace was less frenetic and the rescuers, now the rebuilders, could take a breath. It was decided to abandon the city (perilously close to the temperamental volcano) in favor of a ghost town the next valley over. Ghost town into live town, live city into dead city. At least the ash embedded in his skin was replaced by wood dust. (The rhythms of the carpentry shop came back to him and with them brought memories of the long, hot, callous-building summers spent getting the money to get the knowledge to get out of nowhere, to get to somewhere.) This time the woodworking was soothing. This he could do. This could, this would, help.

Five weeks after the eruption the remaining Lanteans (two dead in a building collapse, one dead of illness, losses like blood slipping through his fingers) don't have a gathering after a long day and don't discuss their odds of rescue (from the planet this time, not the volcano. Odd to think that there were things one could need rescuing from that weren't volcanoes) and don't say that if it hasn't happened now it isn't likely to happen (The Stargate is gone. The nearest system with a Stargate is a week away. The nearest system after that would be a four-hundred year trip by Puddlejumper, if a Puddlejumper were even capable of making a trip that long.). They don't have a meeting. They don't need one. They know it. They knew what the risks were (they didn't have any clue when they signed up, not for the service, not for the SGC, not for the Atlantis Expedition. But they knew that there would be risks. And once they knew the risks, they still stayed on.). Only now they had a different job, and different risks. Survivor.

Ten weeks after the eruption (a month after moving to the New Old City) he gives no-longer-Sergeant Bates a carved child's cup on the occasion of Bennif Ostik-Bates's one year birthday. Daranya Ostik-Bates gives him her thanks and a swift peck on the cheek. Later that night when the children are all in bed and the adults are softened by alcohol she gives her husband a scorching kiss to the deafening applause of a city celebrating new life (hope).

Weeks ago, drunk on exhaustion, Laura had said, "I think we should call it Ghost City." He hadn't begrudged her her black mood, nor corrected her use of 'we' (she was right, Atlantis and Caros City were equally inaccessible, lava and black space barring them all from their homes). He had just pushed a carving knife and wood burls at her. Her cabinet knobs, drawer pulls, buttons, doll's faces and hands were unnecessary for survival and that is why they became sought after.

Six weeks after they move into the New Old City, he finishes the last joint in the bureau just as Laura fastens the last drawer pull to the last drawer. She and Kerist sneak the bureau into the house and into the bedroom. Kerist's cousins help them put the clothes away and all four of them sneak out the back way giggling just as Richard and Bates lead Jeff Francone and Scott Maartenson blindfolded into their new house.

Seven weeks after the city is officially named Speramus he is in Kerist and Laura's kitchen, stony-faced. Kerist keeps his cup full of monspar liquor and Laura says, "I told you he was a jerk and an asshole and you're better off without him". He knows the glare in her eyes, but he can't bring himself to worry. In the morning she is gone but there's water in the cup next to his head. When he can blink his eyes without his head pounding, Kerist tells him of a recipe book of wood stains his cousin found at the fair the weekend past.

A year after, Richard is looking with pride upon the carved and stained Tantane pole. It's not his harvest festival (it is now, he supposes. The pole is his work, certainly, and the harvest will be his food), but he's still thankful for what he has (what they all have) even as he misses what he (what they) once had. The bonfires burn, the wishing-strings tied to the pole move in the breeze, and the music is loud. Daranya drags him onto the dance floor and he stays there until thirst drives him off. A stranger (must be in town for the festival) is blocking his way. He taps him on the back, politely, "Pardon me?", intending to eel around, only to find himself frozen as Ronon turns to him. He cannot hear what Ronon is saying, cannot hear the music he feels pulsing through his body (or maybe that's his heart?). The next thing he realizes is that his hands are bracketing Ronon's face and he's kissing him with eighteen months in his mouth.


End file.
